The Art of Lying
by MythologyGirl
Summary: I was reborn as a coward and a liar, yet I was alright with that because that is what I had been. (Reincarnation story, Fem!Usopp)
1. The Introduction of Confusion

I died somewhere in my 80's, not completely remembering who I was.

Not at the time anyway.

I knew I had lived a careful, peaceful life as I wasn't exactly the bravest soul. That I had been rather reclusive and perhaps more than a bit self-absorbed. That my friends were few and my family, well I was only close to a select number of the otherwise large group of blood relatives. I could even remember some of my hobbies. Mostly being that I was an aficionado of all things animated and collecting figures of my favorite characters.

I knew that I liked to write, though what I had written I wasn't exactly sure. Yet, I remembered it was more for the thrill and sense of accomplishment that I did so. I think?

What I couldn't seem to recall were little things at first, such as where I lived or how old I was. Things progressed slowly from there and before I passed on, I had forgotten things such as my favorite food or the name of the beach I used to spend two weeks every summer at with my siblings and parents as a child. Sometimes I found myself not even being able to recollect all what had happened the day before. It was scary.

No, forgetting was more than that. It was petrifying.

So, when I finally let myself drift from this world, surrounded by my remaining family, still able to put names to most of their faces - I was happy.

* * *

I was startled from death by the sound of loud wails of a baby and hysterical shouting. The world was around me was blurry, the only thing I could see was twisting, splotchy colors that reminded me of some sort of Jackson Pollock painting. One of the first things I truly managed to comprehend being that I couldn't breath. My lungs burned, my skin hot with exertion as I struggled to inhale.

The screaming around me only seemed to rise higher with each passing second. I couldn't understand the panicked words that were reverberating around the room. They were spoken fast and the language was nothing but gibberish to me. I could feel my heart beating against my chest, my vision becoming even worse as I began to hyperventilate.

Then there was a flaring pain.

Someone had begun tapping me on the back with enough force that I was sure I would have a lovely, molten bruise later. It hurt, but it did dislodge whatever was blocking my airways, as I sucked in the stale air. It smelt disgusting like rusted iron, antiseptic, and rubber mixed. It reminded me of those joke candles that had popped up awhile ago.

I scrunched my nose in disgust, a tiny cry of displeasure escaping me.

The screams stopped, only the wails of the baby remained.

The giant hands that held me placed me into what I assumed was another person's arms and the new person cradled me close to their chest. The embrace felt warm, safe even, but I couldn't help the thought in the back of my mind that something was wrong. Very, very wrong.

Why was I so small? Better yet how was I even alive when I remembered dying just moments ago? My mind was as foggy as my vision, I couldn't think straight. My muscles began to lock up as I felt my anxiety skyrocket faster than Superman flying towards danger. It once again became harder to breath, leaving me once again gasping for air.

I didn't like forgetting and I certainly didn't like not knowing what was going on. The ear-splitting sobs of the baby was doing nothing to help calm my nerves either, only making everything feel that much worse. It was awful.

I started to choke. Rough, wet coughs escaped me, making my throat and chest ache with their force. The sensation could be compared to when you swallowed a half-chewed food product and it slithered down your esophagus the wrong way, except a million times worse. The large, slender arm that was encasing me tensed before relaxing once again beneath me.

A soft humming permeated across through room, cutting through the cries and coughing of the baby and I. My own body began to loosen as the soothing sound washed over me. My breathing slowing down, the baby also started to calm down. It was peaceful. So very, very peaceful.

I felt my eyelids grow heavy, the excitement and terror from the last few moments finally catching up with me. I struggled to stay awake, desperate to figure out what was going. Afraid that if I closed my eyes, I would lose this feeling of serenity.

It wasn't long before I lost my battle with the Sandman and found myself drifting off into the oblivion of a dreamless sleep.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **Currently unedited. I should probably look into getting a beta reader for all my One Piece stories. Though I have a tendency to disappear sometimes, so that might not be a great idea.** XD

The OC in this story is probably going to be the closest to an self-insert that I will ever write. Sure, some of my other OCs have certain aspects from me, but this one here will have the most. Of course, not everything about this OC will be true to who I am, otherwise we probably wouldn't have much of a story, but this came about when I thought of which character in One Piece I most closely resembled. So, because of that, I thought it may be fun to have a little fact section at the end of each chapter stating one thing that this OC gets from me.

Here it goes.

 _ **Fun Fact:**_ I do collect anime figures here and there. My favorite being the genderbend figure I have of Trafalgar Law made by Bandai's Megahouse.


	2. The Art of Baby Life

**Author's Note:**

 _I made some changes to the first chapter since my idea has shifted for this story, so you might want to go back and read it again. If you don't want to that is okay, I will summarize it quickly here. The biggest change is that this is going to be a fem!Usopp story now instead of the OC being reincarnated as his sibling. Also, I forgot to put this in the first chapter, but there will be yuri (shojo-ai) and most likely yaoi (shonen-ai) in this and Usopp will more than likely identify as a demisexual. I apologize if the changes disappoint anyone._

 _I feel like this OC is probably my most fleshed out OC so far. I am trying hard to put more detail in, so it is easier to get grasp on who the character actually is rather than quickly skimming over everything._

 _Also, quick thing. I am looking for a beta reader, specifically for my One Piece stories. If you are interested feel free to send me a PM. Help editing and discussing stories would be greatly appreciated, especially with how rusty I feel from a long writing absence. Though fair warning, I sometimes disappear off the grid for awhile due to real life things._

 _As always, thank you so much for all the comments, favorites, and follows! Your support means a lot to me and it is great to see/hear people enjoying my chapter wouldn't leave me alone, I should be sleeping, but suddenly it was just, "Write me!" So I did. Even scrapping everything I had written for it already and starting from scratch._

* * *

Being a baby again was more than a little traumatizing and I was extremely thankful I didn't remember my initial test run. I had the soul of an old woman, old enough to be my new caretakers grandmother, so having them change my soiled diapers and the breastfeeding was all sorts of uncomfortable.

The biggest nightmare however was delivered messily wrapped to me by whom I assumed was my new father. The man meant well, that was easy to see. (And wasn't that the fiasco when my vision developed enough to see, the first thing greeting me was a monstrous seeming man, thanks to my own miniscule height, hanging over my crib and making horrific faces. He was certainly startled when I started screaming like a banshee.) He was apparently very excited to have a progeny as he loved to tot me everywhere to brag to anyone who would listen and even those who really didn't want to. At least, that is what I was assuming he was doing as he had a huge small his face and constantly gestured towards me where I hung helplessly in the sling across his narrow chest. I still didn't really have a grasp on the language to be one hundred percent sure.

Heck, sometimes he would even boast to me about himself. Taking me out to the backyard and propping me up against a mountain of fluff, slightly musty pillows as he shoot down can after can from a rather great distance. I was duly impressed, though I had never really been one for guns. My gurgles of awe and happy shrieks never failed to make my father's grin grow even wider as he preened. The man lived for praise and it was even better if that praise was coming from his wife or daughter.

Yet, those were the good times. The times were I didn't have to contain my sobs of absolute terror and wish that eyebleach was an actual thing or that my faulty memory would kick in and just erase it from my mind. Oh, how I wish I were just being dramatic here.

One of the things I failed to consider when I first realized I had been reincarnated was any and all possible cultural differences. It was something I rarely thought about in my past life and not something that I thought would be important in this new one. I had been proven wrong. Many times over, in fact.

My skin crawled just thinking about it.

"Usopp-chan," my father practically crowed as he all but danced into my view. "It's bath time!"

I swore.

It was a shame everything just came out in babbles, drool dripping down my chin like a leaky faucet. I doubt my father would have understood English anyway. As it was he was simply cooing over how adorable I was, as he gently picked me up from the blanket I was set upon earlier.

'Bath time' were some of the only words I had picked up so far in this world, mainly because I dreaded it so much that I didn't want to be surprised anymore when it was going to happen. The first few times had been enough, I craved the extra seconds needed to get my mental preparations set.

Plus, I would know when to close my eyes.

In my previous life I had been born in America to a family that was pretty much 'no touch.' We didn't ever really hug or give congratulatory pats on the back and we certainly didn't bathe naked together with our parents, which was what was going on right now. My original upbringing in no way prepared me for this. I closed my eyes and tried not to cry.

I could still recall the first time this had occurred. I was unsuspecting and naive, not to mention totally unprepared. I wailed like a broken alarm clock with not only no off button, but with a full-charged battery to boot. That had actually almost put a stop to this 'bonding event' as my father dubbed it entirely. I would have happily let it end to, if I had not noticed how upset and off put he was about me apparently hating him. Honestly, I was rather easy to guilt trip, even if I could lie better than the world's greatest con man.

So, as my father jabbered happily to me in a language I was nowhere near fluent, I let myself drift off, just waiting for it to be over. All the while praying this wouldn't turn out like it had for Kazuma in _KonoSuba_ , I certainly didn't remember making any deals with a stuck up goddess, but I didn't want to count anything out.

I could only take so much misfortune.

* * *

My mother, while wonderful, had a nose longer than Pinocchio's after he lied once or twice. It was that facial feature that brought light to not only who I was reborn as, but to where exactly I had been reborn. Well, that and my name.

I was in the quiet, uneventful place known as Syrup Village. As well as the sole child of Yasopp, a future pirate sailing under 'Red-Hair' Shanks, and Banchina, a woman fated to die, her one wish to see her husband again remaining unfulfilled. It was a punch to the gut when I realized both parents would eventually leave me. I had been becoming very attached to them and their easy expressions of love.

Truthfully, it made a small ball of resentment towards my father to start to roll in my gut. I made every effort to suppress it. He hadn't left yet and I shouldn't hate someone for something they have yet to do, this wasn't Psycho Pass, it was One Piece. Perhaps, now that he had a daughter instead of a son, he wouldn't leave at all. It was wishful thinking, yet I let myself hope.

It was a fragile hope, especially when on rare occasions my father would cradle me in his arms, taking me to the outskirts of the village, just to sit on the shore for hours. The waves lapping at his feet and a longing in eyes that almost hurt to see. Still, it was a hope I desperately clung to.

I pushed those thoughts to the back of my mind, getting back to the more pressing 'here and now' problem - my nose.

I was roughly five or so months old now, just having learned to sit up on my own. Which was a humungous chore in itself with the amount of strain I had to put on my weak muscles to do so. Of course, the first thing I did was check my appearance and, let me tell you, getting yourself placed in front of a mirror was not easy.

I had hoped that now that I was a girl version of Usopp, I wouldn't have inherited my mother's nose. Truth was, while in the show, his nose never bothered me, in fact, I found it kind of endearing, I had a lot of insecurities about my appearance that jumped lives with me. Before I had been on the chubby side with acne that refused to leave me, even well out of my teens. It didn't really do much for my self-confidence, especially when in middle school boy's started to ask me on fake dates, never showing up, while their supposed girlfriends' would sometimes come by to mock me instead. I couldn't really remember any of their faces or names, just that it had hurt - a lot. Scars had been left behind and I'm not just talking about the ones caused by the pimples, but people held more power to harm others then I think most teenagers knew.

It was during this time, appearance became a huge deal to me. I felt inadequate compared to other girls, causing me to not only stress eat, gaining even more weight, but to throw myself into my hobbies, subjecting myself to self imposed solitary confinement. I didn't dig myself out of that dark cell for a long time after, never truly escaping.

It made me feel like some sort of dastardly villain now, especially since I knew looks didn't mean everything. Yet, knowing and accepting were two completely different things. It didn't help the twistedly grotesque feelings I had that Banchina was the sweetest mother anyone could ask to be reborn to. I truly, deeply loved her and her calm, affectionate manner. It was easy to comprehend way exactly Yasopp was so smitten with the gentle woman.

Still, I couldn't help how I felt, often finding myself wishing I took more after my father in the facial features department. While, he had nothing distinctive about him, there was more of an appeal to being a 'Plain Jane' than a girl version of a living puppet.

Mother seemed to pick up on my agitation as she swiftly swooped me up into her arms, rubbing the tip of her nose against mine. I withheld a cringe. "Why such a frown, my little seashell?"

Seashell. Mother loved to call that, a cute nickname she had dubbed me with long ago. She had told me the story why, and, while my understanding of the language still wasn't supreme, I got the gist of it. Father had proposed to her with the prettiest seashell he could find, combing the small beach encasing our island for weeks, before settling on one. It was a conch shell, a mix of blue and pink, and when the sun hit it just right it glittered so much one could easily mistake it for a precious jewel. It was beautiful.

Mother said it reminded her of me. At first I had been confused because there was no way I believed I was that pretty. The confusion most have shown on my face as she explained how, like the shell, I represented the love between father and her. Pure and unconditional.

It was the most mushy thing I have ever heard, but mother told it with such stars in her dark eyes, that I couldn't help but to believe her if only for a second.

Leaning back slightly in her arms, ignoring the way her hold tightened in fear of dropping me, I reached up and carefully gripped her nose. A gummy grin splitting across my face. Mother gave me a smile brighter than the sun in return, a finger gently looping around my own nose.

It was at that moment I vowed, for this woman, I would try to get over my inferiority issues.

* * *

Fun Fact (Maybe?): Like Usopp mentions in this chapter, I too, has the tendency to stress eat. It has gotten better over time, especially now that I have started trying to choose healthier food options. Though, that did lead me to trying to relieve stress through shopping, which is probably just as bad. XD


End file.
